Monster

From DoomWiki.org

A monster is any artificially intelligent thing that is not spawned if the -nomonstersparameter is used. In single player and cooperative games, much of a user's playing time is spent in combat with enemy monsters. Monsters are either placed in a level during its design, created by another monster (particularly, the pain elemental spawns lost souls), or spawned by the final boss.

Any monster placed in a level or created by the final boss is initially dormant and becomes active only when it sees a player, when it sustains a damaging attack, or when it hears a player attack, even if this is with the (otherwise silent) fist. When activated, a monster will advance on its target and attack, sensing the location of thing they are after even if it is out of sight, and advancing toward that location even if it is on the other side of the level. If a monster hits an obstruction during its hunt for its target, it will attempt to walk around it. Monsters that have been alerted normally remain active indefinitely, even after respawning or being resurrected by an arch-vile. However, there is a bug which returns any active monsters to a dormant state if the user re-loads a saved game. In general, monsters of different types can accidentally hurt each other and will often turn against each other in such cases, engaging in monster infighting. If a monster defeats an aggressor without ever seeing or hearing a player, it will return to a dormant state.

Monsters can use some types of teleporters, although they do so accidentally, as their artificial intelligence is very limited. Monsters can similarly activate lifts and open certain doors, although some monsters may not fit through doors and openings that are just large enough for the player. Monsters can be hurt and killed by crushing ceilings, but are unaffected by all forms of damaging floors.

Cyberdemon: The massive boss in The Shores of Hell, a monstrous humanoid cyborg as tall as two men that can absorb more damage than any other monster and moves at a relatively rapid rate for its size, pausing only to fire rockets from its mechanic arm at anything foolish enough to oppose it.

Spiderdemon: The cybernetic boss in Inferno and Thy Flesh Consumed. It appears as an enormous brain with eyes, a mouth, and comparatively small arms, atop a four-legged metal chassis with an incorporated triple-strength chaingun.

Hell knight: Identical to the baron of Hell but tanned in color, emits higher-pitched sounds and endures only half as much damage.

Revenant: A tall, skeletal demon wearing armor that can launch ballistic or guided missiles, and punch opponents when at close quarters. These are the results of recycled demon combatants.

Mancubus: A grotesquely bloated humanoid with flamethrowers instead of forearms. It moves slowly, but takes a fair amount of ordnance to bring down.

Arachnotron: Strongly resembles the spiderdemon, but is much smaller, and shoots greenish plasma instead of super-chaingun rounds.

Pain elemental: A large flying head resembling a brown cacodemon with small arms. It attacks by spitting lost souls at its target, and even creates a few more as it dies.

Arch-vile: A peach-colored, emaciated humanoid demon who is quite tough for its size. It can summon bright yellow flames to engulf and blast targets, and knows how to bring dead monsters back to life. It is the fastest monster in Doom II (almost one and a half times as fast as the cyberdemon).

Doom 64 includes newly drawn versions of the Doom and Doom II monsters. The revenant, heavy weapon dude, arch-vile, spiderdemon, Wolfenstein SS, Commander Keen and final boss are not present, but instead it features some new monsters:

The newer games of the Doom franchise generally include a set of monsters from the PC Doom games or inspired on them and possibly a number of new creations. Various ports include the same sprites as their predecessors, although some change their appearances either to achieve a new style (such as in Doom 64) and the newer games (such as Doom 3) provide polygonal versions that suit their more advanced technology and rendering capabilities.

Doom RPG features almost all of the monsters from Doom II, with the exception of the shotgun guy, spectre, arachnotron, Wolfenstein SS, Commander Keen and spiderdemon (as well as the final boss). It includes the following unique monsters:

Non-boss enemies in Doom RPG are organized into classes. For example, there are three types of imps, while the Hell knight and baron of Hell both belong to the "baron" class. Monsters in the same class use the same sprites, but are somewhat differently colored and vary in difficulty.

The 2016 reboot of Doom saw some new monster designs, though the majority are remastered designs of the monsters from Doom and Doom 2. Many of Doom 3's monster designs were scrapped in favor of making the monsters resemble their appearances in the classic games. The following monsters return:

Games powered by a modification of the Doom engine include a particular set of monsters suiting their setting, style and game behavior. These monsters share various basic characteristics of the Doom game monsters but may show some differences, such as being capable of multiple types of ranged attacks or being subject to the additional possibilities of game scripting (namely ACS in Hexen).